Metadata plays a very important function in helping systems manage content. This is so that the system knows, for example, who should have access to the document, which applications should be used to display the file, what operations should be conducted on a file at given times or within certain workflows.

In this function, administrative and structural metadata capture things like:

A more sophisticated use of metadata is to track the usage of a document and to connect content to other content. A well-known example of this is the Amazon message “people who bought this book also bought…” This information is collected automatically by the system and it associates content based on tracking user behaviours upon the content.

In this function, examples of usage metadata might be:

User ratings; Downloads data (who has downloaded it, or how often); Forwarding data (who has forwarded it, to whom); Search terms (search terms used immediately prior to a download); Links data (number and source of hyperlinks pointing to the content; links from the content to other pieces of content)

Metadata is critical information about information and content that allows us to navigate, find, and manage our key business information assets.